


Writings (or, I was just messing around and look at what happened)

by lonely_night



Category: Original Work
Genre: I don't think any violence in this is that graphic??, I suppose it might be for some though, Narrative and descriptive writing, Other, just messing around really, so you have been warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-10-03 05:38:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10237058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_night/pseuds/lonely_night
Summary: I was just messing around and using this as practice for upcoming exams.There are some narrative pieces and some descriptive pieces! :)Let me know what you think!





	1. Narrative

I turn over the wedding photograph.  
You looked beautiful, shining in all your sparkling silver glory, your man standing proudly at your side. Brown tresses fell into your smiling green eyes but you didn’t care. In the photograph, your teeth look almost bared, gleaming pearly against your red rose lips. Your teeth maybe weren’t as white as they are now but nobody seems to notice. I wonder if you had some spinach stuck in them - that’s a little unlike you, I’m sure you would have asked before they took the photo.   
Looking at the photograph more closely, I’m sure you don’t have dimples. Perhaps the light on the photograph illuminated things that weren’t there, maybe.  
Your man doesn’t look any different though - it’s definitely him.  
Well, it’s definitely you… isn’t it?  
On closer inspection, maybe your hair is slightly too dark. That’s strange - you always said your hair was blonde or a chestnut brown, even in your younger days. This hair is far darker than that.  
The dress is not silver, it’s duck-egg blue, not the colour you always claimed you wore.  
This version of you has a lot of freckles, a bit like me, now that I think about it. You always hide your freckles behind layers of makeup, like you’re afraid of them, like you’re frightened of yourself somehow. Like you’re ashamed. This woman’s smile is nothing like yours. It is too open, too wide, too drunk to be you. This woman is not you.   
‘Who is she?’ The dusty, crumbling attic does not answer.

And then I’m sprinting downstairs, stumbling down the spindly stairs as if they don’t exist. As if nothing exists but this question; who was she?  
The stairs seem to go on forever and a day and I can’t seem to get down them quick enough. One step, another step, another step and then I fall with an abrupt crash. Tumbling down the rest of the stairs, I land clumsily and painfully at the bottom. ‘Well’, I decide, ‘at least I’m down them’. Agony shoots like an arrow to my sides and I involuntarily gasp in pain. But I’m down them. And then I’m up and running again. Or I think I am anyway. But really, I’m not, I’m still on the floor trying to get up. For some reason, I just can’t manage it. My head hurts. A lot. I can’t believe I’ve only just noticed that. Swimming, my head aches, like I’m being tossed and turned in a current so strong that it’s wrenching my very limbs from my body. There’s rocks in this current too, I know this because I can feel them. Feel them hitting my back and pummelling my sides and scraping against my arms and my legs and everywhere. Then I’m down, underwater, struggling to hold my breath and the rocks aren’t ending, they’re endless, ongoing, upcoming at every jolt of the current. And then, as suddenly as they came, they’re gone. Because I’ve just hit my head against one of the pointed rocks. This clears my sight and I right myself and crawl on my strained, gnarly hands and knees -ungraceful, I know- until I reach my next challenge; the final set of stairs descending to the ground floor.

Only, something is wrong.

I don’t know what is wrong until I stare at the stairs properly, daring them to be right, to be real. Because they are going up. They’re not stairs anymore. They’re escalators, they’re moving. They aren’t descending, they’re ascending. They’re going up. They’re going… up. Surrounding my stairs are random, fluffy clouds, bobbing up and down, looking the picture of smug. The image is so surreal that it is slightly comical and I try to hold in the laugh but it’s bubbling up in my stomach the way that laughs often do and I can’t stop myself. I throw back my head and roar with laughter. It feels so exhilarating. I laugh and laugh until tears roll down my cheeks, my throat turns hoarse, and I can’t really remember what I was laughing about in the first place.   
My laugh starts to become sour with something -I’m not quite sure what it is but it feels like resentment and despair and anger and bitterness and hatred and heartbreak and regret and… so much more. The poisons of life I suppose you could call them. I finally stop laughing.   
Now there’s a pressure on my chest. It’s a burning, searing, furious pressure and my mouth falls open in a gasp, limply, like there’s no muscles in my face. Like I’m a doll.   
Then the pressure relents, and something is forcing it’s way out of my stomach, up through my gullet to my mouth. It feels feathery. My head jerks backwards and countless crows fly out of my mouth like a huge, writhing mass of black, swirling monsters.   
When I laugh again at this, I know I’ve finally gone mad. That realisation makes me laugh harder. It’s freeing somehow.  
That’s when I recognise the woman in the photograph. I could have sworn she looked like me.

That she was me.

But, then again, even that could just be my mind swooping and diving with the dark crows screaming high above me.


	2. Narrative

It was a normal, sunny day in Tom’s (or Thomas as he preferred to be called), very normal life.Thomas got up and looked about his very normal room before he opened the window (which was very normal, by the way), glancing at the picture propped up against the window. ‘The very normal picture’, Thomas quickly corrected himself. Thomas was normal, after all, there was nothing weird or creepy about him that the other kids would laugh about, nothing at all.  
Thomas tries to hide the fact that he’s woken up before his alarm because that isn’t normal; that’s the try-hard thing to do, and Thomas doesn’t want to be a try-hard, he just wants to be normal, thank you very much.

Thomas was out of the house before his father who, he wonders, is probably sleeping off the alcohol he had the night before, and the night before, and the night before that. Thomas’s latest scars seem to tug at his skin at the thought but, he just walks out of the house. That’s the normal thing to do.  
Thomas walks to school at a steady pace -not too quick, not too slow. He passes some boys in his year and he inconspicuously copies their actions; hand in his pockets, a slight slouch. Blending into the background, that’s what he’s good at.  
When Thomas reaches reaches his school, his friends sidle over to him.  
“Hey Tom!” waves one of them.  
Thomas becomes Tom when he’s at school.  
“There’s a new kid in maths today, did’j’a know?”  
Thomas didn’t know.

He sits down in maths, first lesson.  
Tom likes maths -had to pretend he didn’t, of course, because no one else did- but he secretly relishes being able to turn the numbers into anything he likes and, at the end of the day, the numbers just sat there. Numbers on a page -two-dimensional, nothing to hide.  
Tom zones out a bit as the teacher talks at them, not particularly enjoying the way she’s going on and on and on and oh! Someone is walking towards him. Tom frowns up at the tall, lean figure. He hasn’t seen him before.  
“Hi, can I sit down?” asks the boy, indicating the rather obviously empty seat next to Tom with careful, slim fingers. Tom nods, his throat dry, the overwhelming blueness of the boy’s sparkling eyes overwhelming him. He thrusts the strange feeling down inside of him and stares with grim determination at the caramel hair of the girl in front.  
“I’m Issac,” volunteers the boy cheerfully after some moments.  
“Tom,” he manages to choke out.  
They sit not saying anything for a while longer and the silence settles around them like dust, clogging the air.  
The silence must be far too loud for Issac who says, rather randomly, “so, uh, what are you good at Tom?”  
“Being normal.” The two words dart out from his mouth before he can stop them. He squeezes his fingers desperately into the palms of his hands. Tom coughs as he sees Issac’s disappointed face, ducking to hide the blush that is starting to creep up his neck like poison ivy.  
When he dares to raise his head and look at Issac’s face, he sees Issac wincing.  
“Normal?” frowns Issac, “there’s no such thing as ‘normal’. Besides, whoever liked ‘normal’?”  
This time the silence stretching between them is not broken and it continues to envelop both of them, it’s tendrils grasping them.  
Isaac’s last words ring in Tom’s head, ‘whoever liked ‘normal’?’  
“I did…” whispers Tom, before he disappears like leaves on a gust of wind, or like silence when it is broken.  
Isaac rubs his head, wishing his imaginary friend could have stayed for longer, before looking back at his maths book. He likes numbers, likes the way you can do anything you want with the digits. Isaac sighs and wishes he could be just a little bit more normal. He wants that more than anything. More than anything in the world.

A few months later, Issac vanishes too, but people hardly noticed he had been there at all.


	3. Descriptive

The damp, dark wood feels wet under my shaking, ink-stained fingertips.  
Tights as black as a well cling desperately to my legs that make no movement.

The ice-cold rainwater seeps through my shoes like a poisonous gas. Mud-like string obscures my face as I cast my eyes downward.

When I look up, the deep crevasses show. A whirlwind of emotions sweep through scared green eyes, so dark they could be brown pits bursting with writhing, slithering, slipping emerald snakes.

  
My once-ripe mouth is sour as I pinch my nibbled lips together. And breathe.  
My white lips are sealed shut.

Gradually, my arm begins to wobble and shake.

  
The worry claws at my almost defenceless stomach, begging to take over my fraying sanity, wanting to engulf me.  
The letters on the paper I grasp seem to jump and leap and fly off the page, prising my mouth open and forcing themselves down my throat.  
The imposing building lurks ahead of me, growing closer, bigger, closer until it takes me by the throat and strangles me, choking me, squeezing me until my silver lips turn blue.

Whispers attach themselves to my ears, cunning and daring and - stop!

  
The murmurs turn to angry shouts that vibrate throughout my body, shaking me awake.

  
My blue lips finally open and an intake of shivering silver air graces my throat, burning.

  
My dull eyes light up like a candle. The monsters reduce to butterflies and my mind spins, spins, spins, but still, I surge forward, like a stallion. To you.

The threatening building comes closer and sooner and faster. And doesn’t strangle me mercilessly, doesn’t grip me and squeeze it’s chubby, greasy fingers around my delicate, stone-cold neck.

It is simply a building.

 

I grasp the brown key that murmurs of the secrets to come and the dark door swings easily open.

 

_Hearing the door, you turn, and it clicks._


	4. Narrative - ish

This was going to be a terrible day, one of those days when its best to stay in bed because everything is going to turn out bad.

You didn’t know that at the time though.  
Looking back now, I’m sure you didn’t.

In my mind’s eye, I watch you get up, dressed, as if through a screen, through a window.  
You fling open the curtains as if you’re conducting an orchestra, as if you’re about the jump off a building with no safety net at the bottom.  
You’re smiling, I’m certain of it.  
Perhaps you won’t be later.

You go to the bathroom and I look away to give you some privacy. I say that as I gaze, as if through a letterbox, at how you were before, your private life. There are no boundaries.  
Glancing up, you’re suddenly staring me full in the face with purposeful, green eyes.  
I cringe away and cower in the corner before I remember you can’t see me. I’m not there, not really.  
What I would say if I was… but anyway, that’s for another time.

Oh, you’re moving again.  
I follow you, follow your every footstep like your walking shadow. A shadow is what you become after. After today.  
Back in your bedroom, and I watch you touch-up your face with the sparse amount of makeup you have. You put too much on, again, and go back to the bathroom. It’s getting tedious, probably even for you.  
I fast-forward.

Then, we’re at a place we both know so well.  
Not ‘we’.  
‘You’ and ‘I’.  
I must create distance.  
You brush a stray brown hair behind your ear unconsciously. You don’t notice it much now but you will, I promise you you will, after today.

For five minutes or so you wander around, waiting.  
I wait with you.  
But you’re waiting for your friends. I’m waiting for what happens next, what will happen next, what must happen next.  
I nearly smile at you. But I don’t.  
“Oh my gosh, where are they?”  
That’s you talking.  
You sound a bit strange, as if you’re talking through a bubble -but you’re not, it’s me. I’m listening through a bubble.

Smiling softly at someone, you spin around as the doors creak open. You think it’s your friends. I know it’s not. Almost feeling your stomach sinking in despair, I sigh with you.

A minute goes by, and then another.  
‘They’re late’.  
We think the same thing, only, you think it of your friends whilst I think of someone else.  
And then I see your bitten lips curve upwards in a shy smile.

This time I know who it is.  
You do too, only you don’t know why they’re here. I do. But that is because I am the shadow of you.

‘Clack, clack, clack’, say her heels as she comes closer to you.  
I know what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling.  
It is tangible.  
Suddenly, the panic is rising, isn’t it.  
It’s not a question.

You know what’s coming, so you just have to bare your teeth in a smile.  
“Will you come with me?

We merge and I become you.  
You become me.  
We are a shadow of her.


	5. Descriptive

And then I woke up.

Your sparkling blue eyes, full of mirth and uncovered wonders were just a mere blink away from mine.  
A mere blink back into the deliriously happy nature of a dream, of a far-flung hope, a shooting star that you never realise is really just a bland ball of rock.  
Hair that once was a published pebble, shining, caressing the white rock where I lay my head. My head stuffed to the brim with fantasies. But not overflowing with them. No, no, never overflowing. They cannot be allowed to escape into reality… not since the last one got away.  
Peppered with little freckles, your nose, as white as a stone, twitches as you breathe in.  
I dare not breathe out for you. Then, this paperweight, this giant boulder holding it all together, will be shattered. And I do not want to lose this.

Your cheekbones could cut the boulder though, I am certain. They slice through my thoughts like an axe. The hollows make you look almost dead but the steady beat, beat, beat of your heart anchors me; you’re not. 

Is this a dream?

Carved like a swan, your neck seems to be made of ivory, your skin is porcelain, like a doll.  
When you speak, I watch your mouth, staring intently as your red lips part, displaying marble teeth, but no words are formed. Instead, a breathtaking melody flows from you, singing the sweetness of a dream turning sour.

Gradually, as I watch, your marble-like teeth truly become marble, the agony twisting your entire being.

Helpless.

I see your blue eyes swimming with tears, becoming jewels.

Your nose, twitches again, trying to breathe out.  
I do not breathe out.  
You cannot breathe out.

Your mouth, opening in surprise, tries to gasp for much-needed air.  
Stones fill it.   
Flying into your mouth from all directions, blocking your desperate breathing passages remorselessly.  
The stones fill out your cheekbones too so that you look like a chipmunk.  
In any other situation its would be comical, and you would laugh aloud. You cannot now.

Beat, beat, —

Your heart turns into an unmoving lump of stone.

Gasping for breath, I wake up at last.

The boulder has been rolled away by the angels of the mind.  
Finally, I have woken up, and, in doing so, I have lost you.


End file.
